Memento
by Magentian
Summary: A personal tribute to L... examining his life, how it unfolded, what it showed us, what was left behind. [Drabble collection.]
1. Knowledge

**The first drabble in this collection is 340 words long, introduction excepted. The narrative style is a little confusing. Allow me to clear it up by introducing the principle behind it:**

_**L in reality might be quite different from the L we are acquainted. **_

**Picture L if you had known him personally. Now picture someone who knew him only from watching Death Note, or reading it on the printed page. Would there not be great disparity? **

**That said, enjoy this meager offering, and please remember to review.**

* * *

You may think that you know Ryuuzaki, but you do not. 

For instance: you may believe that his shirts, those baggy, wrinkly, white things, never had stains on them. You're wrong. Ryuuzaki was the messiest eater I ever knew. His shirts were mosaics of desserts gone wrong and inopportune cups of coffee.

The bags under his eyes, too, while existent, have been grossly over-exaggerated in people's minds. He did sleep on occasion, and not just when it leapt on him unawares in whatever chair he happened to be crouching in.

He was not always quiet and not always tactless and abrupt and not always right. These are myths, part of his legend. Little by little, the man himself fades away, replaced by his initial, by the high drama he never had the time to analyze or to care for.

But you do know some things about him. You know of his little habits, his tone of voice, his brilliant mind. You know of his clarity and his shrewd eye for detail and how he slurped his soup and held his teacups. You can remember and know all that.

Not all of it is true, anymore. Probably none of it is useful, either. Ryuuzaki is dead. Kira is a memory. Even L is fading away over time, reduced to what it always was – another blank entry in the alphabet, a name without a face. No memory, no matter how true or false, can change that. L would not have wished it so.

But still, you can recall that much. For a time – for a brief while – his memory will be preserved in these small traces of him which linger in the mind's eyes and ears.

And perhaps one day, when you lie awake at night and listen to the far-off bells, a man will appear to you, slouched and pale and shoeless, different from what you thought, but still there. Still himself.

You do not know Ryuuzaki, but perhaps one does not need to know to understand. Perhaps it is enough.


	2. Fragile

**Fragile**

* * *

Light could testify all too well to the fragility of life.

For what he did, of course, that was only natural. Hundreds, back in those early weeks, had died by his hand daily, victims of ink and idealism. Onto the thirsty pages he poured the blood of thousands without batting an eyelash.

But life was more than a face, death more than a pen in his hand or a name on a sheet of paper. He had not known at the time, but life could be touched and felt and smelled as well, it could be held or hurt as he willed.

He could recall, for instance, the fragility of L's cheek under the bite of his knuckles. The dull soft thud of flesh on flesh as sullen eyes met his, taking the pain and cycling it back to him with a bony foot to the abdomen, a quiet 'once is once.' L never cried out when he was struck – his was not a life of sound and fury, but of subtle movements and repetition. The bruises on his face rose silently, lingering for days.

Yagami himself did not bruise easily, but L was like one of his own ripe peaches, malleable and soft under the skin. Light remembers.

He could remember, too, when life was distilled to a chain between them, when L was the warm entity always beside him, watching, listening, speaking, remaining silent. Icing and bony joints and warm flesh and another mind lying awake next to him, flickering and bright like a neon sign, pallid lips parting to reveal slow words that belied the blinding speed of his thoughts. He remembers the knobbly fingers and toes, the unkempt hair, rustling steps that impelled him to follow, a voice which soothed and mocked all at once. The shoulder his hand had once touched had been soft and hard and warm and downy like the trembling form of a newborn baby bird.

But what he could most remember was the warm weight of him as Ryuuzaki collapsed in his arms. Life then was a tenuous glance, a fleeting touch, understanding without empathy, a growing knowledge of how and when (not why) things go wrong. Life was writhing helplessness in the face of eternity, and death nothing but its final stillness. Departing warmth. An empty vessel. Silence in a closed eyelid. And then nothing. Nothing at all.

Save triumph.


	3. Fastidious

He is as fastidious about bathing as he is about picking up cell phones, candy, or kitchen utensils. Everything is calculated, everything is planned well in advance to keep everything as far away as possible, as though not to sully himself with the touch of the world. Light has had no choice but to observe it many times, a sarcastic twist to his mouth as he closes the curtain on their naked bodies. L turns the showerheads on with a single, spatulate finger on the button by the door, sometimes adjusting the small dials until the steam is hot enough to scald, other days electing for frigid temperatures, as though trying to keep Light entertained – or in pain.

Finally, when he has muttered and prodded and poked the device to within a tenth-degree of his precise desired temperature, L ambles boldly into the breach. He does not move under the showerhead. It beats down instead on a stationary nest of greasy, messy coal-black hair, running off in rivulets down his jaw to his chin as he stands immobile. Light musses his own locks and watches him pause in that position, feeling the seconds tick by – after exactly twenty-five, he will reach out and grasp the shampoo between thumb and forefinger. L will then invert the bottle, unceremoniously, directly on top of his wet, shaggy head.

It reminds me, Yagami thinks in derision as the great detective tentatively burrows his fingers into the unruly mop of pitch, of a dog. A gangly, skinny, scraggly stray that wandered its way into the house somehow. You can't live with him and you can't get rid of him and somehow, no matter how many times you try and kick him toward the door, he just refuses to leave. He just _sits _there. And stares at you. 

Like a deer in the headlights. Those big, dark eyes.

L washes the entire right side of his body before moving methodically to the left one. He scrubs his bare feet first, moving gradually upward and then around. They do not speak, for it is early and words are not needed or required. For a while, his eyes are closed, and Light can almost trust the peaceful expression on his troubled face.

But as L turns off the water, he opens his eyes, turning his head until the hungry gaze captures Light. As though he knew, and had known all along. As though the world were no threatening mystery to be solved. As though Light were the specimen on a slide, and he the intelligent observer, the humane objectivist. As though dogs could think, or deer could speak, or animals could run their thumbs across their parted lips and murmur the evidence that ends it all, one day. 

For an instant, Light is so afraid he nearly smiles.


End file.
